Social media tips for NZ small businesses in 2018

Social media can be difficult and time-consuming to win over, especially if you’re a small service-based business in NZ. This blog covers what we know about social media and some fail-safe ways to make it worth your time.

We’ve also made a handy, printable marketing calendar for you to use in 2018, which should help spark some ideas for your social media channel/s (and emails) when you feel like there’s nothing to post.

Social media in 2018: what works

Investing in good hardware

You’ve got to be able to compete with other social media accounts that boast great pictures of their work, their processes or their customers every day. It all starts with a good camera.

Consistency

Whoever manages your social media should spend at least 15 minutes a day creating posts or replying to any comments. Being active on social media for two out of your five or six business days can mean that some keen customers are left hanging.

Giving people a place to “look-before-they-book”

If you are working in the hair and beauty industry, make it a goal to post at least twice as many photos of your content than of anyone else’s. For other industries, this isn’t as crucial but it certainly does pay to keep people updated about your business with great photos and content. People love to see businesses from the inside and how they work on Social Media before they book.

Meeting your customers where they already are

Which social media app are your customers spending most of their time on? Master that platform before moving on to the next one. One well-managed and engaging social media account will always be more effective than five poorly-managed ones. We’ve also written another blog post about how to use social media to attract new customers and get great reviews.

Social media in 2018: what doesn’t work

Poor-quality posts

This goes for image quality and captions. If your posts are pixellated or your captions are absent / don’t speak to your followers, your posts won’t get very far.

Letting enquiries slip through the cracks

We talked about consistency before, but this point is becoming increasingly important as many consumers now ask questions by commenting on social media posts or messaging a company page. When people ask questions, they expect to be replied to. Make sure you’re committed to checking comments for interested people that you could start a conversation with.

Low-effort content

Posting stock image after stock image simply isn’t an effective strategy for anyone. Try be creative with what you post. What do your customers want to hear about? Maybe you’ve had a new staff member join your team, maybe you’re offering a new and exciting service or maybe you’d just like to know what your audience thinks about a particular topic.

Getting your Facebook posts seen

Encourage interaction (likes, comments, shares). Interaction (which Facebook calls “engagement”) often has a “snowball” effect. There’s a reason we say posts go “viral”. Facebook loves to see your followers liking or commenting on your posts, so more people will see it.
There are many ways to interact with your followers: ask them questions, seek their opinions or get them to vote between options by using different “reactions” like the ones above.

Running a salon or clinic?

We’ve just finished up an e-book on how to grow hair and beauty businesses. This blog post is made of excerpts from the chapter on social media, but there’s a lot more in the e-book that we couldn’t quite squeeze in here.